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Russian Empire
Russia, oficially the Russian Empire 'is a sovereign nation stretching from Europe to Asia, and America via its dominion, 'Alyeska. In its mainland boundaries, it limits to the west with Norway, Finland, Courland, the United Baltic Duchy, and the Republic of the Three Nations, while to the south it limits with Georgia, Azerbaijan, the russian protectorates of Khiva 'and 'Bukhara, the Turkestan Clique, Mongolia 'and the russian protectorate of 'Manchuria. It also limits with Ethiopia 'and 'France 'via the colony of 'Sagallo. It is an absolute monarchy lead by Nicholas II as Emperor and Autocrat of All Russias. As one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in Europe, and clinging to the most reactionary ideals, it is prone to social unrest. History For history prior to 1776, read Russian Empire on Wikipedia. Reign of Catherine the Great Catherine the Great was a German princess who married Peter III, the German heir to the Russian crown. After the death of Empress Elizabeth, she came to power when she conducted a coup d'état against her unpopular husband. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. State service was abolished, and Catherine delighted the nobles further by turning over to them most state functions in the provinces. She also removed the tax on beards, instituted by Peter the Great. Catherine the Great extended Russian political control over the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Her actions included the support of the Targowica Confederation. But the cost of her campaigns added to the burden of the oppressive social system, which required serfs to spend almost all of their time laboring on their owners' land. A major peasant uprising took place in 1773, after Catherine legalised the selling of serfs separate from land. Inspired by Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev, and proclaiming "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow before they were ruthlessly suppressed. Instead of imposing the traditional punishment of drawing and quartering, Catherine issued secret instructions that the executioners should carry the death sentences quickly and with a minimum of suffering, as part of her effort to introduce compassion into the law. She also ordered the public trial of Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, a high nobleman, on charges of torture and murder of serfs. These gestures of compassion garnered Catherine much positive attention from Europe in the Enlightenment age. But the specter of revolution and disorder continued to haunt her and her successors. In order to ensure continued support from the nobility, which was essential to the survival of her government, Catherine was obliged to strengthen their authority and power at the expense of the serfs and other lower classes. Nevertheless, Catherine realized that serfdom must be ended, going so far in her Nakaz ("Instruction") to say that serfs were "just as good as we are" – a comment the nobility received with disgust. Catherine successfully waged war against the Ottoman Empire and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. Then, by plotting with the rulers of Austria and Prussia, she incorporated territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. Russia had signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their Persian suzerains. As part of this and her own political aspirations, Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they had invaded Georgia; victorious, she established Russian rule over it and expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had developed Russia as a major European power. This continued with Alexander I's wresting of Finland from the weakened Sweden in 1809 and of Bessarabia from the Principality of Moldavia, ceded by the Ottomans in 1812. Napoleonic Wars In 1805 Britain formed a coalition against France with the help of Sweden, Russia and Austria, with Prussia remaining neutral in the conflict. Before the creation of the coalition, Napoleon planned to invade Britain with an army of 180,000 men known as the Grande Armée stationed in Boulogne, but the naval defeat of Admiral Villeneuve in Trafalgar prevented French dreams of invading the British islands in 1805. After this disaster, Napoleon turned his attention to the continent, where on September 8 Austria invaded Bavaria with an army of 70,000 men that was surrounded and defeated by Napoleon in the [[battle of Ulm|'battle of Ulm']] between October 16 and 19. With the [[Austria|'Austrian']] main force north of the Alps destroyed and without Russian reinforcements in a short time, Napoleon advanced on the Danube and entered Vienna on November 13 while the Austrian army of Franz I backed north until entering with the Russian army of Alexander I and commanded by Mikhail Kutúzov. Both armies met in Austerlitz, where Napoleon exposed his right-wing flank to seek to attract an attack and then hit the flank of the enemy army. Kutúzov noted that the apparent French weakness was a trap, but the Russian and Austrian emperors believed that the French weakness was real and ordered an attack just where Napoleon thought, resulting in a disaster and Napoleon's greatest victory. After Austerlitz, [[Austria|'Austria']] signed the Treaty of Presburg and left the coalition on December 26, through which [[Austria|'Austria']] transferred Venice to Napoleon's Italian puppet and Tyrol to Bavaria. After the capitulation of [[Austria|'Austria']], Britain and Russia pursued a peace agreement with France, but Napoleon had other plans. After the occupation of Berlin, the king of Prussia agreed to capitulate to the French and join his bloc after Saxony and the rest of the German states did. Napoleon agreed to return part of the soldiers and weapons with the intention of using the Prussians as cannon fodder against Russian armies that had penetrated the country from Poland. The Russian army was defeated in Eylau on February 7, 1807 mostly by the French and Russian Tsar Alexander I agreed to sign a treaty with Napoleon, known as the peace of Tilsit in March 1807, agreeing that Prussia would remain as an ally of France with part of its territory ceded to the new Duchy of Warsaw. Several Prussian generals went into exile in Russia after the peace of Tilsit, keeping secret contact between the King of Prussia and the Tsar. Given the situation in Spain, Austria declared war on France on February 6, 1809, starting a new coalition to which Sweden joined. Austria had a poorly prepared army at that time, but Napoleon quickly left Spain to face them. On April 9 an insurrection broke out in Tyrol against the Bavarians and their French allies, at which point the [[Austria|'Austrians']] advanced on Bavaria. The Austrians arrived in Abensberg before Napoleon could react and threatened to take Regensburg. Napoleon managed to defeat the Austrians in that town on April 20, to receive news shortly after from St. Petersburg, where the Russian Tsar had declared war on France. The previous day Austro-Russian forces defeated the Polish army in the Battle of Raszyn, managing to conquer all of Poland in a matter of days. Seeing the situation, the king of Prussia decided to change sides (in this story Stein's mail is not intercepted and Prussia is not forced to sign the humiliating convention of September 1808) and began attacking and harassing French forces in its territory, which were partly isolated by the pronouncement of Ferdinand von Schill in Dodendorf where Westphalia's army switched sides, and a parallel uprising broke out in Brunswick. By late 1810, confidence in Napoleon was beginning to weaken and when he returned to Paris a conspiracy forged by radical republicans was executed. Upon returning from Versailles a horse carriage passed by and the emperor was shot 3 times. Napoleon was hospitalized but his wounds were too serious and he died on January 2, 1811. Marshal Soult, who was in Paris, tried to assume the regency and mediate a ceasefire agreement with the coalition. With the death of Napoleon the armies of the Coalition broke the French defenses on the Rhine and the French reserve forces were defeated in the Battle of Châlons-sur-Champagne on March 14, after which Soult decided to surrender to the coalition and these triumphantly entered Paris on April 17, 1811, ending the Napoleonic wars.